Last week, we introduced the Book Rat Project, a sustained experiment in which a book critic (me) will attempt to act as a human algorithm for a willing subject (my Phoenix colleague Will Delman) who, for the duration of the project, will read everything I tell him to. After submitting the subject to a brief, worthy questionnaire, I allowed him to select a title for himself and asked him to review it.

When my story about gender bias on NPR ricocheted through Twitter, I received a tweet from @HashHags letting me know that they didn't fit the bill. Hash Hags, a weekly NPR radio show hosted by authors Julie Klam, Ann Leary and Laura Zigman, is broadcast in New York and Connecticut and has a healthy online following

 Can a book critic transform herself into a human algorithm?

When I looked at NPR's gender bias in its coverage of adult fiction in this week's Phoenix, I sparked a discussion about sexism in literature. Over in the comments, there's a thoughtful debate going on about potential avenues of further research. On Twitter, a bunch of sypmathetic people have spread the word, including Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner (!!!!!!).

 Some intrepid Tumblrbloggr has begun documenting all the blurbs Gary Shteyngart has written over the years, thus picking up the gauntlet Shteyngart himself threw down in my own very revealing* interview with him last month.

Before I read A Bad Thing I’m About to Do (DaCapo, $16) the comedian Chris Gethard’s debut, a book hadn’t made me bleat with laughter since I read Jonathan Ames’s What’s Not to Love? ten years ago (perhaps coincidentally, both feature essays in which the authors get colonics). Gethard made me laugh so much I got a cramp and scared the cats.

Barbara's Bookstore, a retail kiosk about the size of the Cheeseboy grilled-cheese stand it sits next to in South Station, has become an improbable locus for political discourse; a few feet beyond the Lee Child and James Patterson paperbacks that line its external shelves are works of radical thought.

I got two books by young novelists in the mail today, From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant by Alex Gilvarry and The Fallback Plan by Leigh Stein. Both of them had blurbs by Gary Shteyngart.

Anyone who works in a bookstore or frequents bookstores or somehow encounters books written by young novelists will know one simple truth about the publishing industry: Gary Shteyngart blurbs EVERYTHING.

Here's a really cool website called Dead Advice in which people pretend they are dead and write letters to the living. Each letter begins with the phrase, "Now that I am dead, I want to tell you a few things." I like this because I like advice columns, and this is like an advice column but with a pleasant helping of teenage morbidity on top.

When local children's book writer and illustrator Erik P. Kraft archives his CDs, he writes a little story about each one. Sometimes he draws a little drawing, too. (Above, Miles' Davis seminal jazz fusion classic, Bitches Brew.) They're pretty great. You can check them out on Kraft's Tumblr, which is chockablock with charming illustrations.

I have news for you, you book-mangling philistines: Vintage Book Clocks are a total ripoff.

Last week, the inimitable John Hodgman (above, backstage) appeared at the Coolidge Corner Theatre to talk about his new book. (You can read my interview with him here.) It was epic. Ted Leo performed a mini concert, Hodgman orchestrated a script reading of an imaginary competitive hoarding reality show, and a young fella proposed to his girlfriend (she said yes!).

Tom Lyons has bought the New England Mobile Book Fair. Lyons, a Brookline-based management consultant, and current owner Jon Strymish confirmed the sale earlier today. The Newton Highlands institution has beein in the Strymish family for 54 years and has been on the market for one. "I'm happy and ready to move on," Strymish said.

Boston being full of college kids and all, you'd think there'd be a shit ton of missed connections involving books, so I turned to Craiglist to find out. Here's what I saw:

Reading John McPhee (m4w) Green Line

You were wearing a maroon coat and reading "The Founding Fish" on the train around 5 this evening. Wish I had said something, because John McPhee is excellent.